Nottingham Caves Virtual Reality

Nottingham city centre boasts over 700 underground caves. Many of these caves are hidden from site or inaccessible to the public, either because the cave is in private ownership or simply to dangerous to enter. However over 90 of the caves have been scanned with a LiDAR (Light Imaging, Detection, And Ranging) and it’s this data which produces a point cloud of 2mm accuracy of the caves system. Hot Knife took this data and converted it to a game ready Virtual Reality experience so the public can enjoy the caves. Our goal was to maintain as much data as possible from the original cave scans. The project allowed users to navigate the caves as if they were there, it was especially enjoyed by users with accessibility issues and the elderly. The experience was delivered in Nottingham market square over the course of a week using the HTC Vive virtual reality headset.